biography
| name: |
Henley, William Ernest
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1849–1903)
|
| biography:
| Poet, playwright, critic, and editor, born in Gloucester, Gloucestershire, SWC England, UK. Crippled by tuberculosis as a boy, he spent nearly two years in Edinburgh Infirmary (1873–5), where he had a leg amputated, and wrote A Book of Verses (1888) which won him the friendship of R L Stevenson (who used him as a model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island). He was a pungent critic, and successfully edited the Magazine of Art (1882–6) and the Scots Observer (1889), which he renamed the National Observer. He was joint compiler of a dictionary of slang (1894–1904), and published several books of verse, including In Hospital (1875), which contains his best-known poem, ‘Invictus’. |
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